Re-building my MacBook

The Failure

So there I was, peacefully working away in the hotel lobby last Friday and I suddenly got the "beach ball". I waited... got some coffee... drank it all... waited some more... still nothing.

I finally shut down the machine by holding the power button and went to lunch, optimistically bringing it with me just in case it magically came back to life. Surprise, it didn't - so I enjoyed my lunch sans technology while considering my options. As luck would have it, I was about 2 blocks from an Apple store. And luckier still, someone had missed their Genius Bar appointment, and I was maybe 3rd in line.

After waiting patiently for a few minutes, they happily diagnosed my dead hard drive for free, and presented my options:

1. pay them $170 to replace my original 60GB drive with a new 160GB drive.
2. swap the drive myself, and return to the Apple store to have them re-install the OS for me.

I opted for #2, and although it took more time, I ended up with a 250GB drive from Best Buy for $55. The Apple Genius Bar re-installed Snow Leopard for me in about 30 minutes, and I didn't end up paying them a dime! (color me amazed)

Next up, re-installing and configuring the various apps I use...

The Software

Wherever possible, I use Free and Open Source Software. Free as in beer, and free as in speech. It's a win-win in my opinion, and I rarely need to plunk down cash for either software or support. It's also great in this case, where I could easily re-build my laptop on the road. Here's a quick summary of what I use:

• the Firefox and Chrome web browsers, along with the Firebug and Evernote extensions/plugins
• Gmail for personal, and Thunderbird + Enigmail for work email
• the MacVim text editor, along with the pathogen and nerdtree plugins
• Adium for instant messaging and IRC
• OpenOffice - all the MS Office integration I need, and more
• MAMP for local site development
• git for version control
• drush for command line Drupal "stuff"
• Evernote for note taking and clipping pages for later
• Skitch for super easy screenshots (with editing and sharing)
• Xcode - I had to wait on this one because I didn't have my install disk with me, and I forgot to ask the Apple guy to include it. I think what I use from xcode is svn and terminal 2 (and probably some other utilities like zip and tar).
• DoubleCommand - to create a forward delete key, and to use the 'enter' key as a second 'control' key.

The Summary

I lost most of a day in terms of work time. We don't back up the laptop in it's entirety, but we also know to manually save anything important elsewhere, so nothing vital is gone forever (I haven't tried reading from the old drive yet, but it may be possible). Using freely available software - and KeepassX on my USB key - made recovery quite simple. The only thing "missing" is my old, "borrowed" version of PhotoShop that I used about twice a year. I'll get along just fine without that - and if I need to edit images for some silly reason, I'll just have to re-visit GIMP.

(Illustration by Ellis Hamburger)